How US Can Painlessly Help Africa

Sub-Saharan Africa needs help, and the United States could assist easily and inexpensively. Six modest but critical initiatives would provide the possibility of quantum improvements in the African condition without embroiling the United States in direct nation-building.

As so much of sub-Saharan Africa emerges from decades of impoverishment, poor governance, and vicious intrastate conflict, it requires the kinds of thoughtful and proactive support that only the United States can provide.

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell recognized the urgency when he met with African experts at the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency. That was an important move since so many of Washington''s early (and unanticipated) crises will concern Africa. The wars in Angola, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sierra Leone, and Sudan may soon flare up in ways that demand action. Zimbabwe may shortly implode.

But there is a deeper and more medium-term agenda that Powell, the Bush administration as a whole, and Congress need to address. Africans are poorer on average now than they were in the 1970s. They are less healthy and less well-educated. Africans south of the Sahara and north of South Africa have suffered decades of disappointment and decay in governance, in prospects for economic growth, and in freedom from war, fear, want, and sickness. AIDS and other diseases and the poverty and conflict that accompany them fuel cascading human tragedies that threaten the developed world and American security.

Africa must assume primary responsibility for redressing the underlying causes of its misery without outside help, but it cannot be fully effective without that help. Nor can it provide good government and improved economic performance for its long-suffering people without the backing of Washington, London, and Paris. Without that assistance, most of Africa will continue to fall further behind the rest of the world and miss out on technological advances that will make growth and sustainable advances in health and human happiness possible.

Washington''s new six-point plan should include, as a start, doubling current official US research expenditures on developing vaccines for tropical diseases like malaria (research expenditures are now only $85 million a year) for and AIDS. Long-term, the overhang of disease prevents Africa from growing, deprives Africa of many of its most promising young adults, and contributes to conflict and poor governance.

What is also needed:

Continuing the effort to relieve the burden of debt on an accelerated basis from all African countries with per capita GDP levels under $600 per year. The Highly Indebted Poor Countries initiative now underway is too slow and cumbersome. Since poor African states cannot grow with huge debt burdens and since they cannot pay their debts, the losses to the United States and international lending agencies will be paper losses only.
Making sure the recently enacted African Economic Opportunities Act, which lowered tariff barriers for the entry into the United States of African-produced textiles and other commodities is fully utilized.
Smoothing the way to trade will help the more entrepreneurial states, especially those with burgeoning private business sectors, to grow. Only by creating new jobs can Africa alleviate poverty. By helping Africans take advantage of these new legislated opportunities, Washington can assist in the amelioration of African conditions.
Urging the World Bank and the IMF to put primary emphasis on helping those African states that are trying to govern themselves well (like Botswana, Mauritius, South Africa, Mali, Nigeria, Senegal, Tanzania, Ghana, and others), attempting to rid themselves of corruption and become more accountable, and making efforts to strengthen the rule of law.
Providing positive reinforcement to good government and positive leadership by embracing (with aid, state visits, attention from the Department of State and other branches of the government) those African states striving to emulate the Botswanan and Mauritian models. Nigeria, with its dramatic shift to democracy, is one of those linchpin states that deserve Washington''s strong attention. But the rogue African states that are autocratic and whose leaders prey on their own citizens should be shunned as a form of tough love.
Supporting the efforts of the United Nations and the Organization of African Unity to build peace in Africa. These efforts must go beyond traditional peacekeeping, as Secretary-General Kofi Annan realizes so well.
By paying its debt to the UN, Washington would enable the UN to dampen Africa''s wars, reduce conflict, and end the killing fields that so cripple much of the middle of the continent. It is not only morally right that Washington should do so; it is also cost-effective, saving US taxpayers millions in crisis relief and military mobilization expenses.

Whether Africa is of strategic or humanitarian interest to the United States, it is the locus of too many of the world''s problems to be ignored, especially when critical and noncontroversial official assistance can be offered relatively inexpensively, mostly by administrative action, and without involving the dispatch of troops. Powell can lead the way.

Robert I. Rotberg directs Harvard''s Kennedy School Program on Intrastate Conflict and is president of the World Peace Foundation. Robert S. McNamara is the former head of the World Bank.